Members of the First Editions Club receive a signed first edition of a new work of fiction by an emerging author who shows exceptional talent and promise. Our club has been going strong, and growing, for nearly 12 years. It’s been exciting to see many of our selected authors emerge in a big way. We’ve been early champions of young writers whose work has continued to garner critical attention and praise, including Khaled Hosseini, Daniel Alarcón, Yiyun Li, Ben Fountain, Rachel Kushner, Nathan Englander, Dinaw Mengestu, Paul Harding, Joshua Ferris, and Emily St. John Mandel.

Over the years our First Editions Club selections have picked up 4 Pulitzer Prizes, a Booker Prize, a National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Awards, as well as many other prestigious prizes. In addition, some of our authors have received MacArthur “Genius” Grants, and several have been chosen by the National Book Foundation as “5 under 35” honorees. This year, our 2014 selections An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine and The UnAmericans by Molly Antopol were longlisted for the National Book Award. Our May 2014 selection, Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See, won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction!

Our members tell us that the First Editions Club has introduced them to books and authors that they never would have discovered on their own. We can’t promise an award winner every time, but we can promise a diverse selection of wonderful reading.